Season 08 Episode 19: Mallet Maleficarum

are only a fraction of its story. The town's history, like the soil it's built upon, is rich, deep and lay it. It's a living museum embedded in the landscape. Pottery and flint shards dono to one time Neolithic population. A pair of barrows prehistoric burial mounds to the north of the town contained the cremated remains of Bronze Age peoples, whilst cave dwellings and ancient roundhouses point to the presence

of what was once an Iron Age farming community. There is also evidence of a Roman settlement lasting into the fifth century CE. The Foss Way, an old Roman road, still cuts through the town, as mentioned in the Domesday Book. By the eleventh century, a small hamlet known as Shepton had developed on the site. The town's current name, honoring the local Mallet family, has been in use since at

least the late fourteen hundreds. Pull up a shovel full of earth anywhere in the town and there's a good chance something historically significant might come up with it, just like it did in nineteen ninety when a small Roman cemetery was excavated on the outskirts of the town to clear ground for a new warehouse development. It was late one Sunday in July, as the excavations were nearing an end, that workers turned their attention to the last of the

sixteen graves. They had to unearth. The grave, that angled east to west and had been carved out of the earth by rock, contained a single wooden coffin. Inside lay the well preserved remains of an adult male from the fourth century CE, thought to have been somewhere between thirty to fifty years old at the time of their death. Then, as they cleared the dirt away from the bones, they

discovered something else, a strange amulet. It appeared to be made of silver and had been fashioned into the shape of a cross with a disk at the center of it. It would have been notable for its aid and beauty alone, but what really excited the archaeologists who found it was the marking that had been crudely pressed into the metal. It was a symbol known as a cairo, derived from the first two letters of Christ's name in the Greek

alphabet Chai and Roe. An artifact from a time when Christianity had only just been adopted as the official religion of the Roman Empire, was quite simply one of the most important Christian artifacts ever found in Britain. The Shepton Mallet Amulet was swiftly despatched to the British Museum in London for safe keeping. The ensuing excitement was so much that George Carey, soon to be Archbishop of Canterbury, the highest ranking cleric in the Church of England, had a

copy of it for him to wear proudly around his neck. Meanwhile, in Shepton Mallet itself, the object quickly became something of a local emblem. The town's theatre renamed itself the Amulet, while roads on a new housing estate were christened Amulet Way and Chiro Close. An image of the silver disc was even added to the town's welcome site, and local businesses rushed to incorporate it into their branding. The people of Shepton Mallet were proud of their new symbol. Experts, however,

were soon expressing their suspicions. Academics pointed to its similarity to the existing Sussex Broach on display in the British Museum. Peter Leech, an expert on the foss Way, pointed out that the amulet was discovered on an easily accessible, low security site, in a grave that, it turned out, had already been opened once before, and whose disturbance could have easily been disguised. It would be a whole eighteen years before another round of tests were taken to determine the

artifact's true composition. In two thousand and eight, analysis proved that the silver was not of Roman origin after all, but was most likely smithed in the late nineteenth century. For almost two decades, the people of Shepton Mallet had been celebrating a hoax. The real mystery then, was how and why it was placed in the grave. To this day,

the perpetrator has never been revealed. On discovering the truth, Like many of the townspeople, Jeannette Marsh the deputy leader of the local parish council, felt, as she put it, that the magic had been removed from Shepton Mallet. In truth, magic is too deep embedded in this corner of Somerset to be stripped away by a single hoax. In fact, with its many layers of history, Shepton Mallet has always

been a place blessed or plagued by legend. The local prison boasts a reputation as supposedly the most haunted building of its type in Britain. It's also said that the Market Cross, a hexagonal stone monument that stands fifty feet tall in the town centre, acts as a nucleus for the town's apparent supernatural eccentricities. Passes by claim to have experienced cold spots, heard inexplicable sounds, more seen flitting shadowy

figures in its vicinity. The legend of the Dinderworm tells of a terrifying dragon that once haunted the banks of the river Shepey, which cuts through the town, and there is also the tail of Owen Parfitt, an elderly man who was said to have disappeared from his front porch one day in seventeen sixty eight. In the few moments

that his sister was elsewhere in the house. This frail, partially paralyzed man somehow left the property without being witnessed by any of his neighbors, and was never seen again. Some in Shepton Mallet suggested that he had been taken by the devil. They certainly had good reason to think so. At the time, you're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard

McLean Smith. On the fifteenth of November sixteen fifty seven, a farmer named Henry Jones returned to his Shepton Mallet home alarmed to find his twelve year old son, Richard, lying on the floor in paroxysms of pain. Unable to speak, the boy simply writhed in agony, his hand clenched to the right side of his body as he gasped for air. In panic. Henry rushed to his son's aid, demanding to know what had happened, but as he stared into his son's terrified eyes, he realized he was unable to speak.

Utterly helpless, Henry could do little but stay by his son's side and pray for an end to the strange affliction. It would be a good few hours later when the boy's condition finally began to improve. The spasms of pain withdrew, and his breathing returned to normal. As a greatly relieved Henry lovingly stroked his son's hair, the boy began to speak again. It had all started earlier that day, he said,

while his father was out working the fields. Richard claimed he was playing alone in the house when he looked up at one point, startled to see a figure watching him through the window. The swift movement of the figure away from the glass was followed soon after by a short, sharp knock at the door. Nervous Richard opened it to reveal an elderly woman standing on the doorstep who he didn't recognize. The woman smiled warmly and gently asked the boy for a morsel of bread if he could spare it.

Richard happily obliged, surprised when the old lady handed him an apple in return. When Richard took it, the woman stroked a single finger down the right side of his body, and then left. There are two versions of what happened next. In most accounts retold through his street, Richard bit into the apple immediately and chewed it down to its core. No sooner had he finished, he felt a pain building in his right side, precisely where the woman had touched him.

Barely able to drag himself into the house, he fell into the state of agony that his father, Henry, discovered him in an hour later. According to this common version of the story, after hearing the boy's tale, Henry quickly searched the house for the apple. He soon found it in the garden, where it was said to have given

off an unusually sour and pungent scent. In another more contemporaneous telling of the tale, recorded in Joseph Glanville's Seminole sixteen eighty one, Survey of Full and Plain Evidence concerning Witches and Apparitions, Henry found the apple whole and uneaten, and brought it back in side, at which point richard

suffering resumed immediately. In Joseph Clanville's version, when Richard's suffering continued or night and throughout the next day, in an act of desperation, Henry is then said to have roasted the apple, then fed it to his son. Why he thought this would help, no one can say. Either way. It seemed to do the trick, though the boy became convulsively sick at first, he rapidly began to recover and was soon speaking again. The following day, Henry approached the

local constabulary to report what had happened. It was agreed that whoever the mysterious woman was, she was most likely guilty of poisoning his son, but since Richard had never seen her before, it was arranged for all the older women of Shepton Mallet to attend the Joneses farmhouse the following afternoon for an identity parade. Eight. One by one, the women of the town were brought to the Joneses house and presented to the still stricken and bed ridden

boy before forming a line along the wall. Things seemed to be going smoothly until late in the proceedings when a trio of women stepped into the bedroom together. First to enter was Jane Brooks, who neither Henry or Richard recognized, and behind her were her two sisters, Alice Coward and another whose name has since been lost to history. As they step into the room, an expression of abject terror cloud's young Richard's face, his muscles appeared at tents, and

his throat clams up. In a strangled voice, he cries out that he has been struck blind. Others present in the room can only look on with concern as he struggles to get his words out, but the inference is clear. Eventually, when Richard has calmed down, Henry lifts him from the bed and leads him by the hand around the room, pausing for a moment in front of each of the women. Finally, they come to the three sisters, who has stood in

a row with Jane behind the others. For a moment, the sightless Richard just stands regarding the air around him, when suddenly he reaches out a hand and grabs Jane by the arm, like a snake grabbing its prey in a violent blur of motion. Richard's father, Henry, is then said to have grabbed the hapless Jane, pulling her into the center of the room, whereupon he immediately began to beat her. Blows rained down on her head from his fists. He scratched at her face with his fingers, drawing blood.

Jane's sisters did their best to hold Henriette bay to no avail. Finally, the local constable stepped in and pulled the enraged man away. It was said that as soon as Jane and her sisters were removed from the bedroom, Richard made an immediate and sharp recovery. Reports from the time state that he cried out he was well and continued to be so after for seven or eight days. A week later, the young Richard Jones was walking around the town when he came face to face with Alice Coward,

Jane's sister. A short time later, he returned home shrieking in agony, his illness having seemingly returned in full. As he would later claim, it was the exact same pain down his right side and the same inability to speak, and as before, the symptoms seemed to wash over him in waves followed by bouts of incoherence. He claimed Alice had stopped him in the street, then looked him up and down before saying softly, how are you, my honey. Within seconds of their interaction, he said he was in

pain once more. Richard was apparently so distressed that friends and family often sat with him during his rest. These included the local constable, who'd taken a personal interest in the case under mister Gibson, a cousin of the family. It was soon after this, according to Richard, that the visions began, he said. The women came to him at night in the guise of vengeful spirits, all staring eyes, pale cheeks and lips. Sometimes they grabbed at him, he said,

with their cold hands. One day, Henry and mister Gibson entered the bedroom to find Richard lying completely still on the floor. Fearing his son had died, Henry was relieved to find he was still breathing, though seemingly unconscious. When he came round moments later, he described a vision he'd just had. Jane and Alice had come to him again, he said, telling him that what they had begun could not easily be rectified, but if he were to say

no more of it, they would give him money. Then, according to the boy, they lifted him from his bed and laid him out on the floor, just as he had been found. Henry and Gibson looked on with astonishment as the young boy then reached into his pocket and pulled a shiny twopence piece from it. The mysterious coin appeared to exhibit strange properties. As an experiment, it was placed in the fire. As the flames licked greedily at the metal, the boy began to scream and writhe in pain.

Then as soon as the coin was extracted, the pain seemed to stop immediately. One morning, Richard apparently woke up in an agitated state. He'd had another unsettling visitation from the sisters. After describing precisely what they'd supposedly been wearing when they confronted him, the Constable dashed immediately across town to the sisters home. There he is said to have found, much to his horror, the sisters dressed exactly as the

boy depict it. The strange unrest of Richard Jones continued into the cold month of December with seemingly no real improvement. Late at night on the first Sunday of December, cousin Gibson was sitting at Richard's bedside, watching over him as he tried to sleep. All of a sudden, Richard stiffened and pointed in horror to the corner of his room. She's on the wall, he cried out, Jane Brooks. Gibson leapt up in terror, straining to see anything in the

dim shadow at the edge of the room. Without hesitation, he snatched up a knife from Richard's bedside table and rushed to where the boy was pointing. Gibson slashed furiously at the empty air. Woken by the commotion, Henry then rushed into the room. Cousin Gibson has cut Jane Brooks's hand, shouted and excited Richard. When matters finally calmed down, Henry and mister Gibson paid yet another visit to the Constable. The Constable Julie paid his own visit to Jane Brooks

and Alice Coward. According to writer Joseph Glanville, when the constable arrived at the sister's home, he was invited to take a seat in the sitting room. There, he found Jane sitting on a stool with one hand clasped inside the other. He asked her how she was. Though she replied that she was well, the constable couldn't help noticing that she looked pained. When he asked her why she was covering her hand, Jane responded coolly that it was

simply her wont to do. Unconvinced, the constable is said to have then stood up and gently drawn the woman's hidden hand out. It was swathed in bloodied cloth. When he inquired how she'd come to hurt herself, in such a way. Jane apparently responded nervously that she'd scratched herself with a large pin. Jane and her sister Alice were arrested there and then on charges of witchcraft and sorcery against a child. After Jane Brooks and Alice Coward's arrest,

things moved quickly. Their trial began just days later on December eighth, in the nearby town of Castle Carey, presided over by two magistrates, a mister Hunt and mister Carey. First, Richard Jones was asked for his testimony, as the court register recorded, as Richard began to speak, the two accused women entered the room, at which point he was supposedly rendered completely speechless. Only when Jane and Alice were then removed from the courtroom did he seemingly regain his voice.

After Richard gave his testimony, among with a few other witnesses accounts, the case seems to have become clocked up in the court system. Then, on January the eleventh, sixteen fifty eight, Richard was brought back to court After once again sharing his version of events, he suddenly lost the power of speech as soon as Jane brook entered the room. However, this time Alice Coward seemed to no longer have the

same effect on him. The trial continued on into February, by which point it was drawing large crowds of distinguished local people, attracted by the growing notoriety of the case. On the seventeenth, Richard Jones was once more on the stand when Jane was led into the room. Richard began again to suddenly convulse and wail in agony, before falling into the arms of his cousin and hung slack as though he were dead. At this one of the judges ordered Jane to place her hand on the boy. Reluctantly,

she did as she was asked. No sooner had she touched him, he immediately began to convulse once more, casting his arms and legs around violently. However, Justice Hunt was not entirely convinced by the display. Having waved Gibson and the rest of the Jones family away, he took the seemingly insensible boy in his own arms. Once Richard had calmed, Hunt instructed a court employee to tie a blindfold tightly

around his eyes. The Justice then winked at the crowd and called out loudly for Jane to be brought forward, while simultaneously he gestured to a random stranger to place her hands upon Richard instead. The crowd collectively held its breath as she reached out and touched the young boy, and the boy didn't re act. This experiment was repeated several more times, each with different members of the crowd,

and each time the result was the same. When Richard seemingly passed Justice Hunt's first test, the judge ordered him to keep his blindfold on, but this time asked his father, Henry Jones, to come forward and touch him. Apparently unknown to the boy, however, the judge then signored to a clerk of the court to bring Jane forward instead of Henry. At the slightest touch of Jane's hand, Richard was suddenly

struck mute, and his apparent convulsions returned. No matter how many times the justice tried to deceive him, each time Jane's hand made contact, the result was the same. Having seemingly been left completely rigid. After the ordeal, Richard had to be carried home and laid to rest back on

his bed for the next few days. Crowds of onlookers gathered outside the house hoping to get a glimpse of the strangely afflicted boy while in sight, his family tried repeatedly to bend his arms and legs into a resting position, to no avail. On the twenty fifth of February, a Missus Isles, a neighbor of the Joneses, walked out into her garden where she apparently found young Richard standing with an odd look on his face. It soon became clear to her that he was in some kind of trance.

As she later described it, his body then lifted upwards off the ground. It rose higher and higher until he'd gained enough height to clear the garden wall. The woman claimed that Richard eventually he levitated so high that he floated over the wall to appoint thirty yards beyond the property. The boy was said to have just hung in the air for a moment until, as if he were a puppet having his strings cut, he plummeted to the ground.

Missus Isles is said to have rushed immediately to the boy, fully expecting to find him dead, only for him to wake groggly and explain that it was Jane Brooks who'd taken him by the arm and carried him into the air. A villager spotted Richard in a barn, appearing to be hanging from the ceiling four feet above the ground. The neighbor rushed in to save him, but there was no

rope around the boy's neck. Instead, he is said to have simply been hanging in the air, with the palms of his hands pushed up against a beam and nothing to support him underneath. It is said that somewhere between nine to twenty seven people witnessed this bizarre event. It was also said that he remained in that position, seemingly in another of his trances, for a good fifteen minutes before he woke up again and again he said it was Jane Brooks that did it. This alleged event would

prove the final nail in the coffin for Jane. With the local magistrate concerned that Richard's life was now in danger, there was only one thing left to be done. At the end of her trial, Jane Brooks was found guilty of witchcraft and sentenced to death. She was hanged in the town of Chart, Somerset on March twenty sixth, sixteen fifty eight. Though Alice Cowart was believed to be less culpable than her sister. She was still kept under arrest

with the intention of also charging her with witchcraft. However, she died in custody before she could take the stand. Following Jane Brooks and Alice Coward's deaths, Richard Jones reportedly made of full and fast recovery. As writer Joseph Glanville wrote, the boy, having no longer any inducement to act possessed, consented to remain with his feet on the ground and his head in the air. According to the laws of nature. He passes out of the history books and into insignificance,

as does most everyone else involved in the case. Today, only Jane Brooks retains a legacy. Her trial is held up as an example of the misogyny and patriarchal terror

that drove so much of the English wind. However, unlike with other more famous cases such as the so called Pendle Witches or the burning of Mary Lakeland in sixteen forty five for supposedly using witchcraft to murder her husband, there has never been any rationale or reason given for what Jane and her sister were reputed to have done. At no point did any of the Joneses family ever admit to any grievance with or even knowledge of Jane and Alice prior to their first meeting with Richard, and

no link between the two families was ever established. For now, this strange and unsettling event remains unexplained. This episode was written by Neil McRobert and produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Neil is the creator and host of his own brilliant podcast called Talking Scared, in which she discusses the craft of horror writing with everyone from Ta Nanaeve Do to the God of horror himself, Stephen King. I can't recommend it highly enough. Unexplained is an Avy Club Productions podcast

created by Richard McClain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me Richard mclin smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of

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